Galerie Tanit is thrilled to share the participation of

Randa Mirza’s Atlal 

at the Athens Photo Festival 

opening June 10, 2026

at the Benaki Museum

Athens, Greece

Atlal revisits the ancient Arabic poetic motif of ruins – symbolizing loss, longing , and the passage of time – through the lens of contemporary conflict. The work confronts the erasure of memory and history, denouncing the destruction of civilian homes in southern Lebanon by the Israeli army.

A few days after the ceasefire of November 2024, the artist photographed the extent of the destruction using a large-format camera (view camera), following a demanding process that requires patience and time. This method echoes the practice of pre-Islamic poets, who composed verses “standing in front of the atlal (ruins),” thus transforming the act of photography into a ritual of reconciliation and reparation.

In Arabic, the word beyt denotes both poetic verse and home. Mirza’s images of destroyed houses converse with poetic verse, mapping the Arab world’s relationship with the concept of home from antiquity to the present. This juxtaposition activates a collective unconscious, a shared sense of belonging, but also a space of collective mourning amidst the ongoing destruction.

Atlal bridges the past with the present, tradition with modernity, photography with poetry, claiming the concept of a symbolic continuity and functioning as a manifestation of resistance and stubbornness in the face of the wounds of war – while at the same time constituting a moment of elegy and an example of cultural resilience.